Monday's news that Tim Lincecum had reached 1,000 career strikeouts in just over four major league seasons was big, but it didn't come as a big surprise either. Tiny Tim, after all, has been known as a Kid K since he was called up by the Giants.
The news, however, that Philadelphia Phillies pitcher Cliff Lee had taken the major league lead in strikeouts with 10-punchout performance in a 3-1 win over the Los Angeles Dodgers was a bit more unexpected. That's because Lee has historically been one of the league's best control pitchers, a guy you'd expect to see atop the chart of least walks allowed but never the sexier list of highest strikeout totals.
Yet there he sits right now with 100 strikeouts in 2011, just ahead of rotation-mate Roy Halladay, who has 97. The last two seasons have seen a big shift in Lee's numbers. Between 2002 and 2009, he had three (3) double-digit strikeout games in 190 total starts.
Between this season and the last, he has 12 in 41 total starts since the start of 2010. Lee's K/9 rate in 2011 is 10.3, well above his career average of 7.1.
His walk rate this season, meanwhile, is 2.2, well above the average of 1.4 he's established since winning the 2008 Cy Young award for the Cleveland Indians. (His 20 walks this season are already two more than he threw all last year.)
So why the big change?
Lee says it's a simple matter of his opponents swinging and missing more.
From MLB.com:
"I'm not trying to strike guys out at all — I'm trying to get them out as quick as possible," Lee said. "Just for whatever reason, it's kind of gone that way. More strikeouts, more walks — those kind of go hand in hand."
Perhaps the jump-to-conclusion and conspiracy types among us would like to label Lee as the Jose Bautista of the mound, someone whose newfound power makes them an easy mark for suspicion and conjecture.
But as with the Toronto Blue Jays slugger, such an approach is both ill-informed and irresponsible. Lee's velocity hasn't increased much in recent years and his claim that opponents are missing his pitches more — for whatever reason — is really true. This year's swing-strike rate measures at an even 10 percent, well above his career mark of 8.1.
Lee needs only 86 more strikeouts to break his single-season high of 185, set in 2010. But even that note isn't that alarming as his strikeout totals and swing-strike rates have increased each year since his career revival in 2008. As he gets older, presumably his pitch selection is getting wiser and his pitch locations are getting better. It would stand to follow that an increase in strikeouts would occur.
What's more puzzling, if you think about it, is why Lee doesn't seem all that hot about the increased strike totals. Though he's already had four outings of 117 or more pitches (his season high is six, set in 2009), his xFIP of 2.51 is on pace to smash his career record of 3.06 (set in 2010). More guys may be getting on base with his higher walk rate, but they can't score if the guys behind them can't make contact.
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